I am a huge fan of foodie memoirs. I am a huge fan of just about any kind of memoir but if there is food involved, I’m thrilled. I remember a day, about a decade ago. I was sitting in a chair across from my therapist and she looked at me with this BIG look of astonish-faction on her face, like she had just unraveled the key to my psyche. She exclaimed, “Why… I think you’re having a love affair with food!”

Now, I realize that probably felt like a BIG aha moment in the world of talk therapy but truly, for me, it was a rather comical statement. She obviously had never experienced food rapture.

I tried to look serious.

I attempted to dig a little deeper, to examine the relationships in my life and see where I had replaced

REAL love

with FOOD love.

Yet, much as I wanted to please her, I just couldn’t see it.

I LOVE it that food is something I enjoy. Immensely.

Thankfully there are hundreds of food writers out there who have a similar foodie sensibility so at least I’m in good company.

Jen Rosenstrach is one of those writers. She wrote a book called, Dinner, a Love Story. I adore this book. I “assign” it to many of my clients who see meal preparation as a burden because I want them to see what it’s like to feed a family through Jenny’s eyes.

She doesn’t pretend it’s easy. Her words: “You will not hear me describe family dinner as a problem. A problem is a flood in the basement or a bedbug on your pillow or a letter from the IRS saying you owe them $120,000. You may, however, catch me referring to certain family dinner scenarios, such as having two working parents and two kids under two, as not merely problematic but also “soul crushing” and “harrowing.”

I love this book. I’ve read it multiple times. My favorite line: “I found that if I was eating well, there was a good chance that I was living well, too. I found that when I prioritized dinner, a lot of other things seemed to fall into place.”

I see this all the time in my own life and in the life of my clients. For me, it really boils down to love. When I love myself enough, when I “practice” self love, I make nourishment a priority.

I’ve also learned that there are MANY more layers to this nourishment story. My clients are teaching me about those layers.

Layers and layers and layers.

Somehow when we begin to write the stories in whatever form they choose to emerge (stream of consciousness writing is my new best friend) our food world gets a little lighter.

I’ve been collecting snippets of these stories to share with you because story has a way of opening our hearts. And, if we’re lucky, our eyes.

I want to respect the anonymity of the writers who have given me full permission to share their stories with you, so you won’t see their names attached to the writing. I also want to invite YOU to grab your journal and write a few of your own snippets, maybe even a longer piece.

Use the prompt, “I remember. . .” It’s a great way to get started. (Inspired by the book, I Remember by Joe Brainard.)

See where it takes you. Feel free to place your snippet right here in the comments section of this post or send it to me in a private email if you’d like to share it with me, personally.

 

Stories from the Inner Circle

I remember. . .
by N.J.

First, I remember a garden. Always a garden. An abundance of food, even when things were at there worst. No matter how drunk or chaotic things were, there was always food.
 
I remember my Dad getting drunk in the living room and my Mom (higher functioning at that time) drinking wine out of a tumbler, brightly making cookies in anticipation of the drunken fight that would come later. Cookies make everything better.
 
One year, my parents made Dandelion wine in the basement.  One year, we had two pigs, pork and beans, that we fed and loved up – then, we had them turned into bacon and ham hocks that filled our deep freezer to the gills.  
 
But always the garden.  A huge garden.  Even though my Dad was often gone (a sailor) my Mom dutifully kept that garden.  We would harvest and freeze and can everything but oh, sweetness, in the middle of winter to be asked to go bring up corn on the cob from the freezer and have those sweet bites of summer as the rain fell outside.
 
As I got older and things unraveled more definitively for my parents, we had moved to a home with no room for a garden.  Gone was that one acre of sanity that fed our table and held us together. I don’t remember much about those particular years except my grandmother making bacon and eggs for us in the mornings.  Mom would sometimes bake chicken.  When my Dad was home, and standing, hamburgers on the grill.